As a baby boomer, for at least half of my life I saw an established pattern. If you needed to know something you would normally ask someone older. As a reader sometimes that meant reading about it from a book or manual, but always assuming a more experienced older person wrote it. I could see this pattern stretching right up to and maybe even past retirement. There was always something that an older person knew because they had experienced it.
Times have changed. For perhaps the first time in history young people (not the baby boomers) understand some important details better than their elders. I supposed it snuck up on me, but in hindsight there were all kinds of indications. My two children, now adults breathe in this new atmosphere and find it difficult to understand that I used to be fairly proficient on a typewriter and even wrote letters. And that finding out things could be relatively arduous, but I was fairly good at it. At work I have adapted and can use my computer for all sorts of things like emails, data bases, spread sheets and surfing the web.
Social media has just reached my horizon and I realize that a lot of communications both personal and business is done through it. If anything my children and younger co-workers think I should get with it. I agree. I have always believed everything is inter-connected, but until recently I had only the dimmest idea of how to take advantage of it.
The next two months should open up new worlds to me. I still believe that us (it is no longer them) older folks do have a few things to tell younger folks (and our fellow older folks), but we need to upgrade our tools. I look forward to having more access to all the wonderful things "out there" and perhaps making myself more accessible.
On a scale of 1-10 my social media awareness (Web.2) is somewhere (I hope) near 3.
Hello John,
ReplyDeleteI found your comments on social media, looking forward and back between generations to be most insightful. Yes, times certainly would seem to be changing exponentially with the computer and social networking. Thus as we age, it behooves us to find ways to keep informed and updated on this new media lest we fall behind and our ideas and thoughts get relegated to the back corner. I agree also that we have a lot to offer the high tech generation too. We have the ability to step back and look on with a perspective they do not have. One example that comes to mind is the importance of spending "green time" in nature with your family as has been written about in the book "Last Child in the Woods". Our parents would never have envisioned families spending so much time indoors, away from the beauty and appreciation of nature.
So with Betty blogger's help, hopefully we'll be able to encourage the high techers to strive for the best of both worlds.
Hikingram
I totally agree with the above comment and I'm sure this blog post will strike a chord with others. I agree that all generations have things to teach each other. I was recently reading about how we need to start considering "contemplative computing" so that we aren't constantly running around being a slave to our technology. We need to consider what our technology needs to do for us instead. I think that's something that someone from an older generation would have a greater grasp on. What's useful, what's not, and to note the changes in behaviour (both good and bad) that happen because of technology.
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